In a recent interview with the German gaming-site eGames.de Kevin 'arQon' Blenkinsopp talked about the modding-scene, his current work-ons and plans.

Here's an excerpt:

eGames: When you look at the modding-scene today, how would you describe it in just three words?arQon:Bunch of idiots. Modding is utterly thankless work that basically only has two outcomes: you fail; or you 'succeed' and then have to deal with a crowd that demands everything, gives you nothing in return, and generally treats you like shit while reaping the fruits of your time and effort. I'd call it 'voluntary slavery', except that slaves at least got food and housing, and less abuse. Just to be even more insulting, if you create something wildly popular, companies like Epic will simply copy it without so much as a credit and try to pass it off as their own idea.

You can find the first part of the interview here.
It's been split into three parts and the other ones are coming very soon.

*UPDATE*
Here's the second part of the interview. This time I left it unedited, except for the paragraphs. Along with the third part I'll release the original and unedited transcript as text-file.

eGames: What is the biggest difference between the scene you started working with and the one today?arQon: Tough to pick one - probably how little originality there is now. Modding USED to predominantly be a way for people to take an idea and turn it into reality: CTF, CA, Instagib, ProMode, FT, AQ/CS, and so on. Even "joke" mods like Excessive were at least *different*. Now, 95% of mods are nothing but atrocious CS wannabes (yes, I realise the irony here :P) - Urban Terror, Weapons Factory, and so on. (This, BTW, is painfully accurate: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/guides/guide-making-fps.php).

AWESOME work with CPMA, arQon + rest of the peons. I would not be playing q3 today if not for this piece of exceptional coding and design. Thanks a zillion! CPMA should be the default and out-of-the-box mod for Quake Live..

well i don't think it's fair to compare AnthonyJ to arQon. of course, both do fantastic work but Q4Max doesn't touch gameplay for the most part. most of the whine and rage directed at arQon begins with changes to CPM gameplay which are often quite drastic but have a lot of thought and input provided by the rest of the team (from what i know atleast). remember the rage when default gameplay changed from PM1 to PM2. now imagine if AnthonyJ removed crouchsliding from Q4... the whine would probably be similar. maybe he would still be nice about it but IMO it's rather hard to put up with so much whine and rage for years together.

i'm not trying to justify his personality. i just think that CPM as a project is bigger "flamebait" than Q4Max is.

Its rare for me to get as frustrated with the whine as arQon, but part of that is because I havent "snapped" and joined arQon in "fuck em all land", as I believe he described it when Diabz and Zhakal were annoying me re superhud.

I'd say thats just a matter of time though, and he's got 6+ years of whine headstart on me ;)

Nobody can deny arqon is arrogant but his attitude isn't that big of a deal, he isn't really trying to make friends and he's only usually a dick to people who can be politely described as 'quirky' and not so politely described as 'cross-eyed drooling morons'.

Likewise the people he's friendly to I'd politely describe as "the people who agree with him/his views and/or plays his mod/s/" and not so politely as "arselickers". Before anyone feels like enlightening the world that you don't have to be an arselicker to play someone's mod or agree with him, I'd like to reveal the shocking truth that you don't have to have any particular flaws to be swept in by at least a couple of his many extreme generalizations and subsequently be belittled and called all kinds of shit.

Basically, if you don't play arQon's mod, arQon thinks you are one dumb fucker and calls you out on this in every fucking interview and almost every comment he makes. Because if you don't like any particular mod, you're shallow and dumb and don't know what you SHOULD(!!) be doing, and if you DO play a certain mod that is not his mod, you're an idiot because his mod is better at everything and if it lacks something it shouldn't have it and you are wrong wanting it.
This might just be something that ticks people off, but I guess it's all fair and justified since arQon's feelings were hurt first, aww.

YOU'RE GOOD AT CODING ARQON!
YOU'RE RIGHT ABOUT MANY THINGS LIKE COMPANIES ABUSING MODDERS ARQON!
BUT YOU'RE COMPLAINING OVER PEOPLE GETTING ANGRY WHEN YOU'RE JUST TELLING THEM THEY'RE IDIOTS WHEN DISAGREEING WITH YOU ARQON! :(

bombing run is made because of the mod fragball :) other than that I don't really know what epic has copied.
arQon is right though, you see someone make a great mod and all they get is bitching, that's why I'd never attempt to start anything "big" :)

Did somebody force him? Even if he would´ve coded something reasonable it would still look odd to make big efforts for the whine community and then complain that this community follows its nature (e.g. whining) permanently.

You seem a bit raged mate, and a lot of it is truth. Although I have to say that the practice you get working in a game engine for a mod can often lead to a job in the games industry, I think just about every one of us level designers and about a quarter or so of the artists and a few of the scripters here at Grin started out making game mods.

It's good practice and experience, also quite fun, at least it's been for me, creating ideas and stuff I enjoy, if I don't like the feedback I get then I ignore it, and if they get rude I tell 'em to fuck off. That's about it, and I still like doing this stuff. A creative outlet is a creative outlet, and is necessary for me to stay sane :D.

though i think most ppl respect the work of modders, but obviously they dont post everywhere like the ranting whiners, its the silent majority...
+ ppl arguing about certain features of the mods doesnt in any way mean, that they dont appreciate the work in general

He's talented, but ArQon's ego hasn't let him see past the haze that nobody in their right mind gives credit (or offers real, paid work) to people who are self-serving, egomaniac A-holes, constantly in demand of a pat on the back and a holier than thou e-shrine every time they turn on the intarweb.

absolutely not. you don't have to be an "asslicker" to be tolerable. It doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, if you're a d-bag, nobody will want to work with you, which limits his options to either A) make his own company and dictate that which revolves around him, or B) continue to be a whiny know-it-all and get no public credit outside of the 17 cpma nuthuggers that actually post on esr.

arQon interviews fun :))
Oh and by the way, all of you who see "emo/bitter/crying" in there, you're all a bunch of idiots projecting. There are people perfectly capable of making cutting characterization and concisely articulating disdain for any purpose without being emotionally invested in the matter.

"My point in short Arqon is most famous for CPMA a mod that was started on the basic premise of copying the best bits of QW."

It's not like he ever implied that it wasn't? This doesn't have anything to do with the fact that if you, for free, make a successful mod, a for-profit company will copy it and not even give you credit. Everyone in CPMA has always been open what gameplay design aspects came from where, it was always part of the discussion afaik.

Not quite, CPM's aim was to fuse the best parts of Q1, Q2 and Q3 to create what people felt Q3 should have been. It's copying because it's a part of the same series with that explicit aim. There are plenty of ways in which CPM's system is unique.

Creating new concepts has never really been CPM's aim in any case, it was all about improving Quake gameplay rather than reinventing it.

I'm just saying, to me cpm feels more like qw with ramp jumps. The main weapon is still rl since rail is nerfed(not that it's a bad thing). So it's understandable that q3 players are reluctant to switch and qw players just rather play qw.

The featureset mods like OSP, Q4MAX, PK++, HL2DMPro, and so on, are simply doing a job that should have been done by the company that sold you the game. Instead, extremely bright, talented, and dedicated people give up literally hundreds or even thousands of hours of their free time, and put up with incredible amounts of abuse from the community, for absolutely nothing in return except personal satisfaction and the chance to play a game that sucks less than it did out of the box.

i completely agree with this and i thank all the people who are / have been involved in CPMA, OSP and Q4Max for giving us mods that actually made the games worth playing and so many large scale tournaments possible.

Go browse moddb (for any game). You'll find pages and pages of mods that show screenshots of shiny new features but arent ever released.

Mainly I'd say its newbie modders who take on something way too big for themselves, show a few pretty screenshots to get some praise ([+]'s in ESR terminology I guess ;)), and then give up when they realise how much work is actually required.

which makes me even more amazed that several doom3 mods (including hexen, the dark mod) are still going on after a few years now (although hexen has yet to release, dark mod has an alpha out).

I believe JohnC was right when he said that modding is going down because of the huge amount of work required. Add to the fact that nowadays people expect close to industry quality work and you basically have the development time of a commercial game without making any money. It doesn't help either (a point where I agree with arQon and I have never been apart of a mod team) is the sheer amount of abuse that some modders take, it is just unbelievable how ungrateful these people are.

I'm the last of the 'old crowd' left, and while 'relative' newcomers like Anthony Jacques (Q4MAX, note of the editorial staff)

I'm a relative newcomer only because I stopped for quite a few years in the middle of my "modding career" ;)

In general I agree with a lot of what arqon said there, including the "bunch of idiots" comment. The only valid reason to do modding is because you enjoy doing it, and the level of whine from the community takes a big lump of that enjoyment out of it.

Thats the one good thing about moddb like sites, at least people are positive about things rather than wanting to knock holes in it and complain. Its just a shame all the positivity goes towards pipe dreams which will never happen, and those who're more interested in getting good publicity than building a good game.

Yes, but i think the main problem people have with arqon is that he cant or doesnt seem to want to even take constructive criticism and still acts in the same way towards a well thought out, constructive post as to a whining, unconstructive post. Personally, im pretty neutral on the subject but i think thats how most people seem to see arqon.

Well with all this talk of negativity, id like to say you did a fine job on Q4max and keep up the good work. I wouldn't even play Q4 if your mod didn't come out to be honest. The only gripe I have is netcode (rumble rumble I want it to be like cpma). Everything else big thumbs up especially with the super hud and stuff. Good job and I support ya

Well imo I think a lot of the whine that arqon has received in the last year or so is from him changing or removing stuff that the majority dont want changed or removed. There is no reason to remove the old lg. I mean you have like 8 or 9 different styles of rg but you can't have 3 styles of lg???? Doesn't make any sense to me or most other people either. Also he seems to have a piss poor attitude towards most things and he saids its from being nagged at and called names. Well there lots of people that get treated like shit in life and most of them don't have this pissy attitude about them. He makes mods for public use, he needs to realize that along with the good comments hes gonna get the bad ones as well.

Anyway, for those who bitch about the enginewhiners: Who TF cares? It's them who's missing out. Taking offense from a minority speaking in all caps is just stupid.

That said i got something else for the game play part(and I guess this is ix's part and not arqons). Nothing has really happened in the past 20 updates and the things that did change weren't thought through, not put through a proper test phase (no, using the same 10 guys, who never plays anymore, is not proper) and generally felt like they were just there for the heck of it. I mean, is this promode or yourmode?
If you want to actually improve the gameplay of the game I suggest putting out surveys to a broader/newer audience asking the right questions and, you know, using the achieved data. I'm not talking out of my ass on this on, just look @ the amount of times you tried to better CTF and no, it does not differ from the amount of failed tries (personally still like a game of ctf now and then tho).

"talking out of your arse" is EXACTLY what you're doing, and you even managed to pick the worst possible example to fail to support your claims with.

CTF has gone from completely unplayed (and rightly so) a few years ago to the most popular game in the second most popular pickup channel on all of QN.
"number of games played in the channels in the last 7-8 days": #cpmpickup (1237 games)

Firstly NOTHING has changed in ctf activity. Secondly whenever I play ctf now I get 80 frags and dies about 10 np, meaning all the good players have gone astray. Thirdly I've read 4 books about game design and user satisfaction and daily make games for certain target groups, I know wtf I'm talking about.
So how about you start using this community, you so desperately continue to ignore you have, for a change?

So.. correct me if I'm wrong, the "games per day over last month" graph indicates that average of ~25 games were played each day for the past 7-8 days, but "#cpmpickup (1238 games)" suggests that 155-176 games were played daily.

Ix is right, I suspect they switched from games played the last 7 days to last month (or 4 weeks) and forgot to update the description.

Still, pickup activity has gone way up over the past 2 years, and most importantly it rests on a wider base, e.g. not a couple of people with a ridiculous amount of games but a lot of people with an average amount, which can only be good in the long run.

The rocket change was wrong, we kept the GL and RG ammo changes, that was some time ago and the game worked fine but people are so used to spamming away with rockets that 5 was too difficult for them to adapt to. No process is perfect but overall the changes are for the better. Our method works, if you have an alternate then you're welcome to try it. We're not using your survey approach.

" 'you'll eat this pile of shit and you'll like it, because now that we've got your money we don't have any reason to keep our end of the deal and actually deliver the game we promised. Fuck you, haha'. "
exactly what I was saying when I complained about Red Orchestra

Agreed. You should edit something like a smiley out because it help set the tone of the discussion.
It's true about the paragraphs too. I was like "paragraphs please?", when I read this. It's sad to see such bad editing. =/

anyone who thinks that modding is a good path to working for a game company is delusional.

Splash Damage was a mod team who are now a pro dev house. I have been involved in the mapping and modding community for years, and I know countless people who gotten industry jobs. Honestly, every mapper, modeller or programmer I know with any skill who is genuinely interested in working in the industry currently does so.

Modding can potentially be thankless - but you do it to give yourself an opportunity to be creative. You don't do it for the glory, because there is little to be had. Great work is its own reward. Creating a successful mod then complaining that people have *gasp* expectations is ridiculous. Most modders would LOVE to be a position where the community actually takes an interest in thier work.

I would generally agree that mod experience is one of the *best* ways of getting into the industry. However, I think I can see arQon's point better within the context of his other comments.

Ironically, it's the modders who make the "shiny" aesthetic mods that are more likely to be hired over the likes of a modder who creates a novel gameplay mechanic. Sadly, demonstrating artistic/technical abilities is generally much more likely to land you a job than showing off innovative gameplay/ideas. Companies generally don't hire people for their ideas, for various reasons--unless, of course, you're Valve. :)

Yeah - as chop said, if your work is predominantly ASSET creation of some form, it's not a bad scheme: you can show that you're familiar with not just the general concepts but the specific tools, platform possibilities and limitations, and so on. For people making games based on pre-existing engines (or even, tho to a much lesser extent, genres) it certainly makes sense to draw from that talent pool.

That said, it's still not a "common occurence with a direct relationship", as some people are trying to make out and many (apparently) think. In most cases there's an attempt to proclaim causality where none exists because people WANT it to be true, not because it actually is.

most mods aren't competitive driven, and most of their audience's don't come off as bitter, whiny, adolescent, prepubescent little douches. i would have to agree with most of what he is stating, just look how pathetic Gotfrag is and their forums. Basically kids with the only incentive to annoy wades in the shallow gene pool of forum troll-land.

Damn, just got done deleting a post I was making, because I was getting off on a tirade about professional gamers degrading modders.

arQon is, if you ask me, completely justified in his bitterness - regardless of the edits from the original interview that 'cushioned' the impact of his words. CPMA is a great piece of kit that I really love playing, if not for the competition features, the CPM gameplay that allows for ridiculously fun things in physics and gameplay. I don't particularly care where it was from - I never got to play QW and because of the assholes that surround it, I don't really care to. But it's a fucking blast.

People like arQon and AnthonyJ are really quite awesome in what they do for their respective communities, and personally I could never give enough thanks that could completely wipe the effect those who bitch about shit endlessly do to degrade them. And here's to hoping that we'll get to have AnthonyJ for a long time before he retires to the Palace of Fuck You that arQon is in now.

Modders that really bust their ass, have far bigger balls than I do. That's for fucking-A sure.

He gained immortal fame, a pair of invisible mirrored shades to wear after he dies, a personal entry on the Wall of the Raged, and a mini-hooker in spray, being delivered by UPS* to his place of residence as we speak.

All in all, a good deal!

*UPS being Ulysses Pedro Sanchez, the retired Argentine beer can hunter of great renown. He has a tamed Stingray.

He says: "Oooh look at the nice stuff you can have in my mod don't you want it?" And then everyone says "Wow that's sweet, it's only missing X and Y to be the best game in the world". But then Arqon says " I won't put the things everyone wants in it even tho I don't play your particular game type, matter of fact I'll put useless shit in it just to piss you off. Thinshaft with no alternative? BAM! WHAT NOW BITCH!" "85hz physics? HAHAHA SUCK IT YOU MORONS!"

The shaft thing came about because people whined so another shaft change that it ended up at a partial reversion and arQon was too annoyed to spend any more time on it. The shaft graphics should be reverted for the next version of CPMA.

As for your stupid comment as if 85 Hz physics is imposed just for fun sadism - first of all it's not 85 Hz physics, it's 125 Hz jump height, minus maybe 1 unit without the acceleration and gravity rounding errors. It's a necessary part of the CPMA netcode, without it the CPMA netcode would not be possible, that's why the 125 Hz rounding physics isn't coming back.

The netcode and the 125 Hz rounding error movement are mutally exclusive so yes. I'm sure the 125 Hz error movement could be messily simulated but people would probably find it too different to the original and I doubt anyone has the patience to code it.

Yes I read what you wrote and I said that even it it was 85hz physics I'd be fine with that. Whatever it is tho it's quite different than osp/ra3 and I don't mean only in terms of jump distance. Tried cg_predict 0?

Ok obviously I was sidetracking you with that predict 0 so I'll try to keep it simple this time. What I meant was there's more to difference between osp and cpma than just jump distance. For me it feels less responsive in a way, like when going for a jump after dropping of the ledge. In CPMA you'll just get stuck or miss the jump completely. It's VERY different no doubt about it.

It is different but doesn't feel less responsive for me, OSP feels like being underwater (that's not trolling on OSP, I'm just saying that the platform I'm used to feels responsive and the one I am not used to doesn't). I guess it's about what you're used to, so when you're not used to slight differences you tend to make mistakes that feel like less responsiveness.